Ma'alesh; no matter; never mind; what can you do but accept things as they are? Ma'alesh, your pot overturned in the fire; ma'alesh, your prize mare died; ma'alesh, you lost all your possessions and half your family. The word was the everyday essence of Islam - which itself, after all, means "submission.

In silent films, quite complex plots are built around action, setting, and the actors gestures and facial expressions, with a very few storyboards to nail down specific plot points.

Pride is a sweetmeat, to be savoured in small pieces; it makes for a poor feast.

Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice.

Why the devil was my husband positively grinning - and with what looked remarkably like relief?

I felt instantly at home, and wanted only to dismiss Alistair, along with the rest of Justice Hall, that I might have a closer look at the shelves.I had to content myself instead with a strolling perusal, my hands locked behind my back to keep them from reaching out for Le Morte D'Arthur, Caxton 1485 or the delicious little red-and-gilt Bestiary, MS Circa 1250 or.... If I took one down, I should be lost. So I looked, like a hungry child in a sweet shop, and trailed out on my guide's heels with one longing backward glance.

The hand of bone and sinew and flesh achieves its immortality in taking up a pen. The hand on a page wields a greater power than the fleshly hand ever could in life.